As it turned out, Larry seemed okay so far, and we were willing to give him a chance to prove us wrong about roosters and their nasty dispositions. Sadly, Larry didn’t get the chance.

One morning I opened the coop to find Larry dead along with one of the hens inside. The gate was still locked so I was stumped as to what had happened. Some investigation around the coop turned up evidence of the B&E.

Something had CHEWED THROUGH the chicken wire.

I spent the entire day rewrapping the chicken yard with new wire. Bryon sometimes uses the flaming weed dragon up next to the coop yard to burn off weeds, and we think that must have weakened the wire. That and the fact it’s now ten years old.

We didn’t know what had eaten the chickens, but the remaining hens were traumatized and refused to return to the coop the next night. I couldn’t blame them.

I had to gather, and then carry each hen back out to the coop for several nights. One still refuses to go and hides under the shelves in the garage where I can’t get to her. I don’t even want to know how much poop is accumulating back there.

A few nights after the massacre, I carried a hen under my arm out to the coop, opened the door and counted. One, two, three, four, five…wait a minute. You are NOT a chicken. Yep, sure enough the perpetrator was back. A possum was huddled in the corner of the coop. The hens were all up on their roosts and off of the floor, but there was already a pile of feathers on the coop floor. The birds were calm, but if I hadn’t caught the jerk, he would have eaten more for sure.

I poked at him with the rake, but he refused to leave. I ran inside (yes, still holding the chicken under my arm) and told Bryon. He sprang into action and came out with the .22 revolver and dispatched the varmint.

Life on the farm is hard sometimes. There’s always someone waiting in the woods to pick your bones.